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Airbnb listings in U.S.
Introduction
Airbnb is one of the most visited rental applications. According to relevant statistics, it’s estimated that Airbnb has more than 20% market share in the rental industry until 2023 and the average revenue of hosts annually is $13,800Reference. For landlords, understanding pricing patterns and the factors that influence prices is an effective way to increase revenue. In our project, we aim to identify potential pricing and revenue-related characteristics from listing information throughout the United States. At the same time, it is very intriguing to see what amenities are most widely offered by tenants because travelers’ requirements for living conditions are gradually increasing despite being in a short-stay residence. To some extent, the most widely provided amenities denote the minimum standard of amenities in the listing.
About Data
The data we use comes from the website named Inside Airbnb data source where archives scraped data on Airbnb. All the data contains mainly two aspects. One of them is the detailed descriptions of existing listings in 33 cities in the United States, including features like latitude, longitude, room types, and rating of different aspects. The other dataset records the price and availability during the next 30, 60, 90, and 365 days. After joining the two datasets together, the future expected revenue for each listing can be calculated by using the unit price one night and the number of available nights.
General Info
The distribution of Airbnb in the states and prices
California has the most listings overall from Airbnb dataset, but they are spread across eight cities which could have significantly different characteristics and patterns in terms of ratings, prices, and property types. New York City and Hawaii, on the other hand, are both famous tourist destinations, and they are expected to have high listing volumes and higher median prices.
While Hawaii does have the highest median price among all states, and Rhode Island has the second-highest median price, we cannot overlook the importance of ratings in generating revenue.
Ratings provide a comprehensive indicator of a traveler’s overall experience with an Airbnb listing, taking into account many different aspects such as location, amenities, cleanliness, and host communication. As such, ratings are assumed to be highly correlated with revenue.
Analytics
Nationwide
Ratings by states
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There are 33 lines in the chart, each representing the average score of all listings in a city in terms of six different scoring perspectives. Among all the 33 cities, the worst overall score comes from New Jersy.
Overall, it seems that the rating of service attitude is high, such as whether the check-in is convenient and fast, and whether the communication is friendly and smooth. However, the ratings regarding the hardware conditions of the house itself are relatively low, such as cleanliness and location.
It seems that people are more likely to give high ratings for good communication with the host, so improving service attitude is the quickest way to improve ratings. Also, for a listing, since location is a factor that cannot be changed, improving cleanliness is another way to improve the overall rating. Because there is more room for improvement in the cleanliness rating, it will be the most effective way once the cleanliness is improved.
Price of different room types
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As is commonly perceived, hotel rooms have the highest average price, followed by entire home/apartment rentals, private rooms, and shared rooms. The average price of an entire home/apartment is twice as much as a private room. Focusing on nationwide data, the average price of a hotel for one night is $392, and the shared room that is the cheapest is $88.
From the host’s perspective, unless the property has an absolute advantage in one aspect, such as a very good location and complete housing infrastructure, it is much safer to price the property at an average price to avoid lowering the price/performance ratio of the property, resulting in a lower probability of renting.